Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 31

Message box won't stay hidden
I can't get the new message box ("Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2008 are now open.") to stay hidden. I'm using Firefox, and have all cookies enabled, but though the message disappears when I click hide, it returns when I go to a different page. IE6 seems to be ok. Any suggestions? —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 08:27, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Fine on IE7, if that's any help. Happy‑melon 11:48, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Add #siteNotice { display: none } to your user CSS. MER-C 03:48, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

what is that thing...
What is that thing on the top write of some articles? I wanna make one for my first article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dchs vamp (talk • contribs) 19:10, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * An Infobox? --MZMcBride (talk) 19:28, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

inclusion in tables
Hi, this a bit of vanity, but I've earned it, for once! I have a list of articles on my user page and have spent two days getting an article to Good Article status (my first). I want to include the GA icon, as in in the table, but it messes up, showing the formatting as well. Any ideas how I can do this? Thanks. -- Rodhullandemu  (Talk) 21:12, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Unless I misunderstand, something like this should do it: [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|14px]] A Hard Day's Night (film) (taken to GA ) -- Boracay Bill (talk) 03:11, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Brilliant. Thanks. -- Rodhullandemu  (Talk) 04:24, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

User rights
First of all, would it be possible for a dev to give me a copy, either publicly or privately, of the english Wikipedia's $wgGroupPermissions array? I'm currently updating User access levels and, combined with mw:Manual:User rights, having the raw settings should allow me to make sure I get everything right. Many thanks in advance, Happy‑melon 11:48, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Also, a few other questions about userrights on en:w: More to follow I'm sure. Happy‑melon 12:07, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) Are Special:Makesysop and Special:Makebot deprecated by Special:Userrights, or are they still used by bureaucrats?
 * 2) I believe that bigdelete is restricted to the developer group, but the developer group is deprecated and empty. Does this mean that bigdelete is actually unusable on the english wikipedia, and big deletions are carried out manually by the devs using shell/root access?
 * 3) Which of the following permissions are explicitly revoked when the user is blocked?
 * apihighlimits, block, checkuser, delete, deletedhistory, makebot, makesysop, markbotedit, oversight, renameuser, undelete, unwatchedpages, userrights


 * I can answer question one. Makesysop and Makebot are still available to be used, and haven't yet been deprecated. Bureaucrats can use either one.  Majorly  (talk) 13:57, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/ <-- Look for InitialiseSettings and CommonSettings. Nobody currently has the bigdelete right, and as of yet, nobody has needed it (to my knowledge). In theory, the only action that should be allowed when a person is blocked is self-unblocking. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:25, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * From testing on my own wiki, when blocked: block, checkuser, deletedhistory, oversight, hiderevision, userrights, unwatchedpages, mergehistory, deleterevision, renameuser, apihighlimits, nuke, and siteadmin all seem to work when blocked. delete, undelete, markbotedit, review, and stablesettings do not work (Wikimedia doesn't currently use all of these, some are related to the new revision deletion system and flagged revisions) Mr.  Z- man  21:02, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks to you both. I never realised that all the wikimedia wikis were configured from the same config files - what a mess!!  Thanks for that test, Z-man - I was half tempted to block myself for ten minutes and go on a whistlestop tour of the admin tools, but I didn't really want to impinge on my block log :D.  mw:Extension:Nuke has such a cool name, even if it is of questionable utility!! Happy‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:09, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * A mess? Have you ever tried to maintain 500 LocalSettings.php files? -- Tim Starling (talk) 06:12, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * pwnt. <i style="color:#FF00FF;">~Kylu ( u | t ) </i> 06:32, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * You got me :D! I was thinking more of CommonSettings.php, complete with commented-out hacks from 2005 and fragmented manual additions to various black- and white-lists. But then again, you've got much better things to do with your time than tidy a config file that only a handful of non-devs will ever see. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 09:36, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

More questions: <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 10:45, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * How, if at all, are the "founder" group permissions different to "steward" permissions?
 * 1) Bureaucrats can grant both sysop and bureaucrat flags, but only stewards can revoke them, right?
 * 2) Although the chances of it ever happening are remote, if a user was promoted to bureaucrat without first becoming an admin, would they be able to delete/block/protect, etc? My intepretation of the permissions array is not, but I'd like to be certain


 * 1) Not different at all (except stewards on Meta can desysop on any project; local founder can only desysop on the local project they are founder on.
 * 2) Right. This can be fiddled with though, and the norm is actually to allow bcrats to revoke (on non-WMF wikis)
 * 3) No they wouldn't be able to.  Majorly  (talk) 10:59, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. My rewrite is complete - do take a look at User access levels and let me know if I've made any mistakes, or if there are things that could be explained better. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 14:52, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The founder group exists because some people on this wiki wanted to give Jimmy some kind of mark of respect in the form of a group assignment, but were in conflict over which exact group that should be. I created the founder group as a compromise. The user rights are arbitrary since he generally gets what he asks for anyway. There's no such thing as a "local founder", Jimmy is a steward on meta and so can desysop people anywhere. -- Tim Starling (talk) 20:52, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think there is, since he desysopped Zscout370 locally.  Majorly  (talk) 21:02, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes he did, but you said "local founder can only desysop on the local project they are founder on", a statement which clearly does not apply to Jimmy since he can desysop anyone anywhere. Life is complicated enough without introducing such semantics. -- Tim Starling (talk) 21:14, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks for that clarification. I did notice that the founder group was only assigned on enwiki; I was going to ask about that, but it all makes sense now.  <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 22:29, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Javascript included from external page
Hello, I want to get an external table editor working. When I included those lines to my monobook.js it worked fine. The thing is that I want to add some individual preferences and so I copied the code from to User:Eneas/edittable.js and changed my monobook.js. The problem is that the script doesn't work anymore with those changes. Could anybody help me please? --Eneas (talk) 12:46, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Try doing  instead.  The reason is that it's not raw code (User:Eneas/edittable.js is a HTML page whose contents are a JavaScript script).  There's a way to get just the raw code but I've forgotten it.  x42bn6 Talk Mess  19:32, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, scrap that, found it. Use this as the URL if you want to use your method: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Eneas/edittable.js&action=raw  x42bn6 Talk Mess  19:34, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thx --Eneas (talk) 11:11, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Canton of Champagne-en-Valromey
Does anybdy have any reason this article looks like it does? Editorofthewiki 14:11, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * It sounds like something surprises you but I don't know what. Do you have a more specific question, for example involving what you see and what you were expecting to see? Maybe it's no longer relevant. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:52, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it's an issue involving the right line of that huge table - it's got the background color but no borders or content. ~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 04:25, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Template Infobox Canton de France wasn't complete, so it swallowed the next table. Fixed now, I think. – Leo Laursen – ☏ ⌘ 07:38, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, thanks, that was exactly what I was talking about. Editorofthewiki 20:49, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Is there some way to keep Google off pages we don't want to be found easily?
A sockpuppet has just made it clear that google links to indef-blocked user talk pages. The question is, can we keep it away from the pages somehow? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:43, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * If the mediawiki search tool wasn't so awful, we'd be quite happy to lock google out of everywhere but the mainspace - it can be done easily with robots.txt - but google is too useful as a search tool at the moment. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 14:28, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * See also Meta element, but I don't think it's possible to use NOINDEX, NOARCHIVE, NOSNIPPET in Wikipedia. I have seen short discussions with no result about permitting exclusion of user space from search engines. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:40, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * While I understand the desire to keep some pages off of Google, I miss the days when I could search all of Wikipedia via google. The problem was that people were googling their names and finding their AfD(closed as a non-notable garage band) as their first google hit. It could be extended to talk pages, but I would rather it did not as it helps in tracking down things. undefinedUntil  14:52, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Article talk is already excluded by Google (as the only namespace). It appears Google did it by themselves. See Village pump (technical)/Archive 19. I don't think all userspace should be excluded but maybe there should be an option to exclude a given page by placing something there. It appears Wikipedia doesn't use mw:Extension:NoRobots. If that changes then maybe it should be ignored in article space. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:40, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

How are hyperlinks copy-pasted with images from Wikipedia?
I was wondering if anyone might be able to answer this question I have...

Many-a-time have I copy-pasted images from Wikipedia pages into Microsoft Word. In doing so I have noticed that the images are hyperlinked back to the source location, i.e. if I right-click on the image once pasted in Word and select 'Edit Hyperlink', the address is listed as http:\\upload.wikimedia.org\wikipedia\en\...

What I was wondering is how the images retain the hyperlink, whereas other images I have copy-pasted from the web do not? Any information anyone can give with regards to this would be much appreciated.


 * I think the answer is the images on Wikipedia already contain hyperlinks, and the images you are copying from other sources do not. After you paste a picture into a Word file, you should be able to remove the Hyperlink; it should be an option when you select "Edit Hyperlink". --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 14:54, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

New suggested Improvement for the PDF export feature
I understand that Brion has been trying out some extensions for converting articles to PDF files, and the results are looking pretty pleasing. I just want to ask him and other developers to go one step further - is it possible to generate a PDF file from an article and e-mail it straightaway (i.e. a merge of pdf-export and EmailArticle)? This would be a feature especially useful for promoting Wikipedia in China - I understand that the current Internet Censorship conducted by the Chinese Government doesn't include PDF files. If there is a way to generate PDF from articles and e-mail them straightaway it would be a good way to let the Chinese population read the censored articles (e.g. Tibet) through their mailbox, as well as introducing the quality of Wikipedia to them.

I was hoping to make this suggestion on the MediaWiki development site but I couldn't find my way around there. If any developer is reading this I sincerely ask you (ALL of you) to relay this to Brion and consider building (or improving) this Extension!--Computor (talk) 05:38, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * File a bug request, since the devs aren't likely going to be reading this. MER-C 08:11, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that one was already filed and rejected, on the basis that there was too much risk of people vandalising a page and then immediately hitting the email-article link. The odds of encountering a vandalised page are low, but are much higher if you've just vandalised the page deliberately. --ais523 08:30, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Vandalism aside, there's a problem with allowing the wikimedia servers to be used to send e-mail to someone who hasn't opted in to receiving it. --Random832 (contribs) 20:05, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Indeed, emailing stuff directly out of a user-generated site would be basically an invitation to spam. For this reason, we're very unlikely to add a general 'email this page to a friend' feature; you can always use your own browser's 'Email this page' feature or attach a file on your webmail. --brion (talk) 20:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Removing cell borders in a table
I have been playing around with my user page lately, trying to get a table from one of my user subpages into a NavFrame. The original table looks like this...

But things have gone slightly awry when I tried to place it in a NavFrame, as it became grey and all the cells suddenly developed grey borders. I have managed to get rid of the table border, but not the cell borders. The results so far:

<div class="NavFrame collapsed" style="background: white; border-style: none; padding: 0px; font-size: 100%;"> <div class="NavFrame collapsed" style="background: white; border-style: none; text-align: left; border: Black solid 2px; -moz-border-radius: 10px; padding: 10px; font-size: 90%;"> <div class="NavHead" style=";background: white; text-align: center; padding: 2px; font-size: 160%;"> All my accounts

All my accounts {| align="center" style=" background: white; cellborder: white; border: white; text-align: center; padding: 0px;" ! style="background:white;" align="center"| Project name ! style="background:white;" align="center"| English ! style="background:white;" align="center"| French ! style="background:white;" align="center"| Italian ! style="background:white;" align="center"| Russian ! style="background:white;" align="center"| Spanish ! style="background:white;" align="center"| Ukrainian
 * align="center"| Commons
 * colspan="6" align="center"|
 * colspan="6" align="center"|


 * align="center"| Meta
 * colspan="6" align="center"|
 * colspan="6" align="center"|


 * align="center"| Wikibooks
 * align="center"|
 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"| Wikinews
 * align="center"| Wikinews


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"| Wikipedia
 * align="center" style="border:1px solid black;"|
 * align="center" style="border:1px solid black;"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"| Wikiquote
 * align="center"| Wikiquote


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"| Wikisource
 * align="center"| Wikisource


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"| Wikiversity
 * align="center"| Wikiversity


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"| -


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"| -


 * align="center"| Wiktionary
 * align="center"| Wiktionary


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * align="center"|


 * }

If anyone could help me fix my problem, it would be greatly appreciated. It Is Me Here (talk) 16:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Is this right (it looks right with Fire Fox)? <tt>MiCkE</tt> 17:51, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks great, just one thing - how come the two "All my accounts" titles aren't quite lined up properly? They both appear to be centered but aren't quite in line. It Is Me Here (talk) 19:38, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The two "All my accounts" titles aren't lined up because the top one does not center absolutely relative to the width of the table, but relative to the width of the table after subtracting the space for the [hide] button. Nihiltres { t .l } 21:10, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I see - is there any way to make the table centre after taking into account the button as well? It Is Me Here (talk) 22:02, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, I've been wondering about that as well. It's one of the problems in creating collapsible succession boxes. Waltham, The Duke of 06:04, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * You don't need to have the heading inside the table, see what you think of it now? <tt>MiCkE</tt> 09:24, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I don't quite get what you're trying to say. It Is Me Here (talk) 18:06, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
 * As you can see if you click "show" above the two "All my accounts" are lined up, thats becauxe I moved I moved it outside (before) the table that makes up the "grid of wikis". <tt>MiCkE</tt> 07:17, 10 April 2008 (UTC)